Data Recovery From An Old Hd, Tried Easeus What Next?

Hi All,

Little while back now (2004 in fact) my hard drive failed and took along with it some very important files. I've kept the hard drive in my draw ever since. It is an IDE HD, of course and makes a distinct "clicking" noise when powered up.

So far I have tried Easeus 5.8.0 (twice) and each time it returned about 40% of the data but not the data I was after (word docs mostly) and icare data recovery which came up with about the same result.

Are there any software alternatives left? Or should I now be looking at data recovery services, which at first glance look expensive and I might need monthly terms!

Or is there another way I've missed?

Your thoughts would be much appreciated,
thanks in advance.

 

That clicking sound is "the click of death". I'm surprised you're able to get as far as you do with EaseUS and iCare.

I don't think you're going to have any other option than to go with a data recovery service (and yes, it's expensive). But since the files you're interested in are 12 years old, aren't they outdated?

 

I recommend trying Recuva from the makers of CCleaner and see if it might pull something else off the drive.Wise Data Recovery is also popular. But since the other recovery programs were not successful, don't hold your breath. All software based data recovery programs use basically the same methods.

Note that forensic data recovery services use sophisticated (read: expensive) equipment to analyze the individual platters after disassembly in a "clean room". Plus it takes advanced knowledge to operate this equipment and compile the findings (if any) in the correct order. And this all takes a lot of time and money. For this reason, these services can cost many $100s or even $1000s - with NO guarantee of success and often results with many gaps where the data is not recoverable. If a photo file, for example, a gap in the data may render the entire image file useless. So you really need to decide if those 12 year old files are really worth it.

By the way, "all" drives WILL fail - eventually. So I hope you have multiple (because 1 is not enough) backups of your current drive(s).

Note the clicking sound is the read/write head banging against the end-stops as it seeks the file tables or the next segment in the file. The more it bangs the greater the odds the R/W head is being knocked out, or further out of alignment. While it does "suggest" it is banging because the data it seeks "could be" missing or corrupt, it does not automatically imply the data is irretrievable or the platters are not still in good shape. But again, to retrieve it, if even possible, could be very expensive.

 

thanks guys, pretty much as I suspected I'll have to dig into my pockets soon. The word files are written works of art (or so i like to think) so are personally valuable to me.

I do back up my drives nowadays, this was from a long time ago.

 

So you have no printed copies you could maybe scan in?

 

no - all on the hard drive.

 

Too bad. I would shop around then at data recovery services. I know there on line sites that promise no charge if they cannot recover any data, but I have no idea what they charge if they claim they do find data. I also see that Seagate - the drive maker offers this service too.

 

Go here http://www.osforensics.com/tools/create-disk-images.html
it uses a tool called dd, when you have the image use their other tool -
http://www.osforensics.com/tools/mount-disk-images.html
Mount the dd image and copy out the files you want.
A good resource is My Harddrive Died - http://myharddrivedied.com/ & the podcast on PodNutz.

 

cheers foogoo I'll let you know how i get on.